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Career Advice (2013)

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Re: Career Advice (2013)

#131

Post by em-bee »

JackMorgan wrote: post #118

Adventures come to those who seek them. One can find big expensive adventures for six months out in the mountains, or small free/low cost adventures like volunteer fire fighting, painting, rock climbing, cooking, dancing, acting, making music, deep friendships. Our lives are filled with exactly the richness we seek. Travel is just a catalyst to get us up off our sofas and make new friends. Having moved many times, I…

there is a third option. as others here mentioned, find jobs in interesting places. i have been all around the world while working or traveling to look for work opportunities.

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#132

Post by em-bee »

bjornsing wrote: post #108
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #28

Pretty good combined life+career advice I heard a long time ago and followed: If you're going to move countries, the best time to do it is right after college. Starting from scratch in an entirely new country, with no connections, no professional ability to speak the native language, and rapidly dwindling cash reserves, was one of the scariest and most thrilling things I've ever done in my life. I recommend it to no…

> If you're going to move countries, the best time to do it is right after college. Perhaps this should be reconsidered in light of remote work? I’m 45 and thinking about moving to another country, mostly for lower cost of living and lower taxes (I’m Swedish). I’m basically a remote freelancer, so the step doesn’t feel huge.

don't do it to save money, because you unlikely will. lower cost of living is associated with a lower quality of life. things are cheaper in other places because they have less quality. what you save on some things, you end up spending on others.

before you move somewhere, make sure you like it there regardless of the cost or quality of life, because if you don't you will end up spending more on things to compensate for what you are missing.

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#133

Post by gumby »

farmeroy wrote: post #43

I spent my twenties riding freight trains across the US and cycling across Europe and Asia, living off of music. I'm not sure I would recommend that to anyone who is looking for career advice - Now I'm trying to build a solid career for myself as a software developer and I have no idea if it is easier with all that behind me or not. While I'm hoping that the soft skills and self knowledge I may have acquired over the…

My gf asked me to apply for a big company job (she’s worked for all of FAANG). The second time a recruiter asked me to explain to them what the “narrative” was in my resume cause they couldn’t see it, I figured I had good reason not to work for one of those places.

They were looking for a simple A -> B -> C while my life has been more A -> G -> B -> -> -> Q...

I haven’t worked for a big company in 35 years, and I can’t imagine they are any more interested in me than I am in them. Even my own companies...by the time they get to a couple of hundred people they are too big for me.

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#134

Post by em-bee »

j7ake wrote: post #82
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty hard to move between countries when you're in college. The credit transfer situation is pretty tough. People do it, though. That's why most of the foreign students at any given college beat the pants off of the locals. I speak from experience :D

One can do an foreign exchange year during university…

or summer internships. check out IAESTE and AIESEC and a few related organizations

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#135

Post by em-bee »

xyzelement wrote: post #112
throwaway_75369 wrote: post #14

Should be labelled (2013). Would be nice if I didn't have to say that; in so many ways the bloom is off the rose of my (admittedly high paying) corporate job. I even recently reunited with some old friends who chose a more independent career path, and was jealous and nostalgic- they're definitely working far closer to their passions with more freedom than I've felt in a decade. But man, what a decade since 2013. I wo…

// I do wish I had hedged my bets better and been less of a workaholic, of course. Would be nice to be married now. I hear you and maybe a word of caution - sometimes "I don't have X because I was too busy with Y" is a way to sweep the complexity/ambivalence of X under the rug. After all, plenty of very busy and hard working people get married, and I doubt that it's very often "I am dying to go meet this woman but I…

that's a good point. not finding a partner is not because of to much work, but because of not thinking about finding a partner.

which i think can also be interpreted as: if you didn't think about finding a partner, then maybe you weren't ready to get married.

but you are ready now, because now you know why you want a partner, and now you can look for the right kind of person.

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#136

Post by em-bee »

xyzelement wrote: post #113
Hendrikto wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would be nice to be married now. While the idea and ideal are nice, it often does not work out that way in practice. Lots and lots of unhappy marriages and divorces.

I find this to not be a helpful frame of thinking. A divorce is not a random natural disaster that befalls you. You have a lot of control about who you end up with, who you are inside and how you engage with your partner. So the fact that divorce happens "often" or "rarely" doesn't matter to an individual scenario - it's completely within those people's controls to make good or bad decisions.

but it takes two. if your partner does not reciprocate then sometimes there is nothing you can do to fix the relationship.

but that should not prevent anyone from trying to find a partner. it just means that i would look for a partner who understands this, and is willing to look out for your needs just as much as you look out for theirs.

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#137

Post by em-bee »

jxl62 wrote: post #56
kstenerud wrote: post #11

No. What the experiment showed is that you can be TEMPORARILY coerced into certain behaviors in abusive environments (especially by authority figures - as was exemplified in the Milgram experiment), but it won't change who you actually are. The SPE is really a study in toxic workplaces and abusive relationships. I really wish people would stop quoting the SPE without researching what actually happened and why (and th…

If someone gets angry, lashes out, and the following day says sorry I wasn't acting like my self the other day.. Why would that be true? Why can't it just be that it was a part of you? I don't mean when it's said casually either. Even without the experiment, it seems odd to me that behaviors and culture you engage with for generally half of your waking hours for several decades has nothing to do with your identity. T…

Why can't it just be that it was a part of you

it could be, but assuming that in general implies that your behavior is genetic and there is nothing you can do to change it. which i do not believe to be true. your behavior is formed by your environment, and you can change how you behave.

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#138

Post by moffkalast »

mejutoco wrote: post #120
moffkalast wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To some degree yes, but after a while there are so many creators that it's just noise and nobody can really stand out unless they're truly beyond exceptional. So in that sense it is more of a zero sum game in practice. Take Steam for example. After Greenlight was superseded by Direct and you now only need $100 to get on the platform it's practically drowning in games, making for near zero discoverability. But especia…

> What are you gonna do, make a new country? If technically you want to be the Prince of a constitutional monarchy, it might work ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand )

Ngl I have always wondered how far one would get if they just started dredging sand onto an international waters seamount and made a completely new island, then declared it a micronation. In theory there should be a lot of market interest with gambling, server hosting and the like. Sealand still has the problem of actually being on built by and stands on Britain's territory.

In all realness it would probably take about 10 minutes before the US navy rolls up like "open the country, stop having it be closed" and declared it theirs. VLS missiles will continue launching until morale improves and all that.

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#139

Post by xyzelement »

em-bee wrote: post #136
xyzelement wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this to not be a helpful frame of thinking. A divorce is not a random natural disaster that befalls you. You have a lot of control about who you end up with, who you are inside and how you engage with your partner. So the fact that divorce happens "often" or "rarely" doesn't matter to an individual scenario - it's completely within those people's controls to make good or bad decisions.

but it takes two. if your partner does not reciprocate then sometimes there is nothing you can do to fix the relationship. but that should not prevent anyone from trying to find a partner. it just means that i would look for a partner who understands this, and is willing to look out for your needs just as much as you look out for theirs.

Exactly. Who you marry is 100% within your control. It can still fail, but you aren't setting yourself up for failure at least.

Re: Career Advice (2013)

#140

Post by ponector »

em-bee wrote: post #132
bjornsing wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're going to move countries, the best time to do it is right after college. Perhaps this should be reconsidered in light of remote work? I’m 45 and thinking about moving to another country, mostly for lower cost of living and lower taxes (I’m Swedish). I’m basically a remote freelancer, so the step doesn’t feel huge.

don't do it to save money, because you unlikely will. lower cost of living is associated with a lower quality of life. things are cheaper in other places because they have less quality. what you save on some things, you end up spending on others. before you move somewhere, make sure you like it there regardless of the cost or quality of life, because if you don't you will end up spending more on things to compensate…

That is not always true. Cost of living in Houston is lower than in LA. Is life worse there? Is quality lower?
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